Memory Quotes
Memory has a small number of very good, well-sourced lines. Oscar Wilde, in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), calls it the diary we all carry about with us. William James, in The Principles of Psychology (1890), says that forgetting is as important a function of the intellect as recollecting. Ray Bradbury, in Long After Midnight (1976), says that God gives us dreadful gifts and the most dreadful is memory.
The flagged lines are the kind that circulate on social media. “Remember me with smiles and laughter” is credited to Laura Ingalls Wilder, “Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory” to Dr. Seuss, and a line about the sap in the trees carrying the memory of the red man to Chief Seattle. All three are marked misattributed.
In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important a function as recollecting.
And when he is out of sight, quickly also is he out of mind.
Memory is merely the process of tuning into vibrations that have been left behind in space and time.
Memory, in widow's weeds, with naked feet stands on a tombstone.
God gives us dreadful gifts. The most dreadful of all is memory.
I do not trust the memory. Imaginings too easily become memories, memories imaginings.
Memory is fallible. Dreams overwrite the reality, fond fantasies inform the dreams.
Friends depart, and memory takes them
To her caverns, pure and deep.
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.
Nostalgia, as his Uncle Joshua had said, ain't what it used to be.